This Is The Last Call: Tavern Talk Is Out

A woman I have known for several years said that she had noticed something about my columns. I asked her what it was.

``You seem to run into a lot of people in bars,`` she said. ``You`re always introducing characters you run into in bars.``

I said that I didn`t think I did that very often.

``You do it enough that I`ve been struck by it,`` she said. And then she proceeded to give me a little lecture.

``I don`t know what it is about newspaper writers that makes them want to glamorize drinking and hanging around in bars,`` she said. ``Maybe there was something tough and exciting about the image of drinking and bars years ago

--but that`s all over. When you glamorize hanging out in bars it`s really an anachronism--and a damaging one at that.``

She said much more than that--we talked about it for a long time--and I`ve decided that she`s right. It`s not just me; for some reason there seems to be a tradition among newspaper columnists to treat the consumption of alcohol as if it is either funny or dashing or some combination of the two. Young columnists, old columnists, big-city columnists, small-town columnists

--in print, they always seem to be hanging out in bars and viewing the world over drinks.

One reason this pops up in the newspaper is that a lot of newspapermen do, indeed, frequent bars. I do--probably too much, if I`m being honest with myself. If there`s one thing the country has learned in recent years, it is that the abuse of alcohol can have tragic consequences, both for the people who abuse it and for their families.

Yet there we are--newspaper columnists--proudly proclaiming in print time after time how we met this guy at this bar, or how we had this great conversation at that tavern. Newspaper columns probably don`t affect the way people look at life as much as TV shows or movies do--but in our little way, we`re telling everyone who reads the paper that it`s cool to hang out in bars night after night.

Luckily, most people in the world don`t do that--they go home after work instead of hitting a bar. Yet this newspaper-fed myth--the myth that all of the good times are being had at bars--has flourished over the years, and has become a part of journalistic tradition. I remember when the Apollo moon rockets were being shot into space, an editor told me to go out and get

``regular people`s`` reactions to one of the important launches. He told me to go to a bar and watch the people there watching the launch. This was at 9:30 a.m.

So there I was in a downtown bar at 9:30 in the morning, asking the patrons what they thought about the moon rocket. It occurred to me then that this was probably not the best cross-section of America--men and women who were drinking in public at 9:30 a.m. And yet the opinions of those drinkers were the opinions the readers of my paper got the next morning. The tradition continues; any time a paper wants to get the public`s reaction to big news, reporters are sent to bars, as if that is where the real America is hanging out.

There is an excellent talk show on public television called ``LateNight America``; twice in the last year or so I was a guest on the show, and I was highly impressed with its host, a bright, energetic man named Dennis Wholey. I was totally surprised, a few months ago, to find that Wholey is a recovering alcoholic--a man whose alcoholism was so severe that it threatened to ruin his career, and led him to contemplation of suicide.

Wholey has written a book called ``The Courage to Change``--a book of conversations between himself and other alcoholics, many of them with famous names. The stories the men and women tell are wrenching; alcohol--this drug that we like to glorify so much--has brought them pain and humiliation almost beyond their powers to describe it. The very fact of the book is a hopeful sign; the people who talk to Wholey are committed to defeating their alcohol problems, and the book has made it onto the best-seller lists, meaning that a lot of other people are trying to defeat those problems, too.

The combination of reading Wholey`s book and talking with my woman friend has led me to resolve something. As I say, I stop off in bars more than I should, and that will probably continue. But I don`t think I`ll continue to glamorize this in the newspaper.

I think I should be able to write my columns without reminding everyone that I was in a bar the night before, or that I was having a drink when a certain story was told to me. I don`t fool myself; this isn`t going to change the world. But I keep thinking about what that friend asked me: What is the purpose of holding bar-hopping and drinking up to be praised and emulated?

She`s right; there is no good purpose. I`m going to try to cut that stuff out of the columns; when I fail, you have a right to call me on it.